Learning is a continuous and integral part of daily life. Humans never stop learning. Traditional educational techniques take place in the classroom, lecture hall or the like. However, traditional classroom learning tends to prevent and/or discourage students from taking full advantage of the available technology—e.g. educational resources available online, educational resources available in accessible libraries, educational resources available from other text books and/or the like. Also, traditional classroom learning tends to not take full advantage of individual abilities and styles of learning. Not all students learn the same way; some learn primarily visually, some learn primarily textually, and some learn primarily when allowed to put ideas into practice. There is a general desire to improve educational and/or learning techniques by taking into account the personal interests and/or learning styles of individual students.
The internet, which is accessible to many students, provides an often overwhelmingly large amount of content. Other sources of educational resources (e.g. libraries, book stores, educational service providers) can also provide large amounts of content. Such content may be related to the academic interests and needs of students, but is sometimes completely irrelevant. Unknowingly, due, for example, to the amount of content and/or a lack of organization of educational resources tailored to a student's needs, a student can make poor choices about what educational resources to study or observe, and for how long. If a student is motivated to learn, he or she can be persuaded to choose educational resources that suit their learning style and pace; however, it can be difficult to locate such resources.
There is a general desire to provide students with recommendations for actions in connection with educational information resources. There is a corresponding desire that such recommendations be based on feedback so that the recommended actions may help the student learn relevant subject matter more effectively and/or efficiently.
Issues relating to the overwhelming nature of amount, variety and/or lack of organization of content available from the internet and from other sources is not limited to educational content. These issues apply generally to other information resources available from such sources. There is a general desire to provide users with feedback-driven recommendations for actions in connection with such information resources.
Feedback can be a powerful tool for assessing the value of information to a user or users. There is a general desire for techniques to provide feedback-driven information retrieval.
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related thereto are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon a reading of the specification and a study of the drawings.